English Class (Open to students)

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Richard Stone sat behind the desk in his classroom, that day's lesson was already written up on the board and he was just sitting back, waiting for the little minions to arrive.

If one looked at the whiteboard, there wasn't a lot written there as the students were still working on their individual projects. What was written there were just a dew things that they students may have forgotten to add in their assignments:

Where was this person born?
How big was their family?
Did they get married?
Did they write for themselves or for others?
What was their muse?

There was a slip of paper on top of the log book on his desk. He had received the paper from the office, informing him of a new young student who was joining his class that day. He was always eager too meet new students and he hoped that this Melissa was as keen on English as Loralie - the last girl who had come to see him - was.

He looked up as the door opened, a ready smile on his face as the first student entered the room.

[lorilie]

Melissa gazed about the room as she entered, her small body seeming to flow like a fish through the air. She smiled at her new teacher with a grace in the greeting as she walked to his desk.
"Good morrow, sir. Melissa Whitcombe, new and.... new. I'm afraid that there wasn't a Melissa Whitcombe before me, nor was I anyone else but me, so I can't be improved." She glanced at the white board, seeming to gather that she had to research an author quickly. "Oh, are we writing a paper? On authors or something? Is Lewis Carrol taken? HE intrigues me, even if his work scares off others." She took a breath before plunging into quote; "'If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?' Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carrol. I'm afraid the year escapes me. I've never had much luck with time. It seems to enjoy making me late and often runs away from me. Rather irksome, to be truthful." She said, her soft voice, English accented, gaining a dreamy tone, not unlike Luna Lovegood's.

Meanwhile, Loralie Castle entered second, and was quick to take a seat close to the back, and close to Mr. Stone's desk. The lanky fifteen year old was in her normal attire, and her sea colored eyes offered the teacher a silent greeting as she sat, pulling her book, Doyle's work, naturally, from her bag before setting the pack down next to her feet. She waited patiently for her classmates, knowing they would soon file in, so that she could bask in her favorite - and best - subject. She noticed the fourteen year old, obviously, for she was talking to the teacher. Loralie knew she had Melissa in another class, and though they hadn't exchanged words yet, she rather liked the girl. She seemed spunky, perhaps a bit mad, but she had a bit of humor in her, to say the least. Perhaps she'd brighten up and liven the classroom.

~

Notes: I hope they get better. >>
Tagged: Students! and Cara.
Muse: -has never had any. she runs away. often.-
Outfits:
Loralie: www.polyvore.com/loralies_literature/set?id=18983373

Melissa: www.polyvore.com/melissa_literature/set?id=18983517

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Richard laughed merrily at the girl's arrival and introduction. "It is a pleasure to have you in my class, Miss Whitecombe." He said with another laugh. "I would be Mr Stone." He nodded a greeting to Loralie as she entered, his attention still on the girl in front of him. "Currently, the students are finishing off their projects. The assignment is on an English writer; be they author, poet or otherwise." He once again nodded as another student entered the room, another young girl who liked she was much too young to be in this class, until you looked into her eyes. "You can either start your own, wait until the class have finished theirs or ask another student if they would like some help." He nodded over toward Loralie. "Loralie has just started the class, if you would like, you can ask if she would like a partner." He was tempted to suggest that the girl team up with Cara - the other girl who had just entered - but if he knew the girl, she would have well and truly finished the assignment by now.

~*~*~*~

Cara entered the room, dressed in her normal attire: Navy pantsuit, like coloured long sleeved cotton shirt and a tie that brought complemented to outfit. She returned the teacher's nod as she took her seat near the front of the room and took her glasses case from her satchel. After putting the glasses on, she pulled out the folder that contained her assignment. She had chosen to do William Shakespeare, and focused on two of his works; Macbeth and a Midsummer Night's Dream. Of course the assignment included the other required information about the man's life and the rest of the works that he had done, but she added the plays as an extra.

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Andie slipped into the room as Mr Stone was speaking to a student, one whom the head cheerleader didn't recognize so it made her want to know everything about the other student.

She walked across the classroom and took her normal seat, near the front yet in the middle enough so that she didn't appear to be a teacher's pet - she did rule the school after all. She took out the books she needed for the class and opening the library book she had borrowed and was taking notes from, she quickly started writing. She had chosen to do her assignment on the English poet, painter, and printmaker; William Blake. His poem: To the Muses was her favourite.

HETHER on Ida's shady brow
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceased;

Whether in heaven ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air
Where the melodious winds have birth;

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea,
Wandering in many a coral grove;
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry;

How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.

Glancing up at the board, she quickly wrote down what was there on a scrap piece of paper and would cross each item off the list when she found that she had added each thing. If she hadn't, then she would rework the assignment around them.

Even being head cheerleader, she was still an A+ student, and this was one thing she would never give up. In fact, she'd give up her pon poms if her extra-circular activities ever got in the way of her grades, not that she would ever share that information with the rest of the squad.

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her i-pod and tucking the cord for the earphones down her top and pushing the unit into her back pocket, she plugged the phones in and pushed one into her right ear. If she kept her head held in the correct direction, Mr Stone would never know. And if he did notice, she knew the young teacher would only ask her to put it away.

[Onzyy]

Darren was off to his first English class. It was going to be interesting, well, he hoped that it would be. It was to be another teacher to explain his condition to. Darren was a Synesthete, or a person who could 'see' music, read colour. A rare condition at the most. He had a letter from his adoptive father, Scott, that explained everything.

Stepping into the classroom, he waited for another girl to finish talking to the male teacher. He saw on the board that they had an essay to write, and thought which author he would use. Bram Stoker he thought immediately. Stoker was one of his favorite authors.

The note that Scott had written him read:

To whom it may concern:

My son, Darren, suffers from a rare neurological disease called Synesthia. This means that words, numbers etc, are coloured instead of just black or other colours. He often wonders at this and seems to go into a trance. If this does happen, then just bring him back to reality.

Yours Sincerely,
Scott Laramie

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Once Melissa had left his desk and headed across the room to find a table of her own, Richard Stone looked up at the next student who was waiting for his attention. He made a mental note that the boy had waited quietly until the English teacher had finished with Melissa rather than announcing his arrival and want to speak.

He took the offered note and read through it. He nodded his head and looked up at Darren, a twinkle in his soft brown eyes. "So, when you seem to be staring off into space, I treat you like I do everyone else and throw something at you?" It was common for a teenager to go into a trance halfway through a lesson, and it was his way of letting Darren know that he wouldn't be treated any differently than the rest of the students. "Unless there is anything else, go and find a seat and you can get started since you've already read the board." He pointed toward a rather large bookshelf that was between the doorframe and the front wall of the classroom. "Feel free to have a look through the books over there in case I might have something by or about the person you are going to research."

[sepia]

Checking the door to make sure this was the right classroom, which it did seem to be, Jessica took a breath before stepping inside. English was one of her favourite subjects, so she was looking forward to this class, but there was always something slightly nerve-racking about an entirely new class. Still, she adored books, and in her few days here hadn't heard anything terrible about Mr. Stone, so she was expecting to enjoy this.

Attired neatly if simply in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, Jess stepped into the room, eyes scanning around and quickly falling upon the figure of the teacher at the front, who currently seemed to be talking to an older boy. Well, she'd better go introduce herself. Weaving her way through the desks gave her plenty of time to read what was written on the board, and by the time she'd reached his desk, she'd already half-decided who she was going to write about. Waiting until Mr. Stone had finished with the boy, she occupied herself by watching what everyone else was doing.

"Mr .Stone?" she said, feeling like she was spending her life going around saying things in a questioning tone of voice these days, "I'm Jessica Brown, I'm new here. Uh, I assume we're working on an assignment on an author?" She stopped speaking, waiting for a reply, and hoping that she hadn't assumed wrong - though, really, she couldn't see what else the words on the board could mean (not that that didn't mean that she couldn't worry about being wrong, of course...).

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

OOC: Sorry to rush you along Onz

Once Darren had moved off to find a seat, Richard turned to the next student who was speaking to him. "I am he." He responded when the girl questioned his name. "Welcome to the class. Currently the students here are doing a report on an English author or writer."

He once again pointed over toward the bookshelf. "As I said to Darren, feel free to look through the books I have available. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask me or one of the other students."

[sepia]

"Thank you," Jessica said, nodding her understanding, then, figuring that that was about all she needed at the moment, and having done the polite thing of introducing herself to the teacher, she turned, and moved towards the desks. Where she was struck with the eternal problem of the new student: where should she sit?

Wanting to be near to the front, after a brief dither, she slipped into a seat next to someone she actually recognised: Cara, whom she knew from Miss Carr's riding lessons, deciding that someone she knew even a little would be better than a complete stranger. Realising she actually knew very little about the older girl as she was sitting down, she wondered whether this was actually such a good idea. Oh well... at least the advantage of having work to do meant that they didn't have to converse, though she really did want to make some new friends, here.

"I hope you don't mind if I sit here," she said, tentatively, "I can move if you'd like?"

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Cara had finished reading through her report, and had her desk set up the way it was in every other academic glass she attended. Red, blue and black pens along with a lead pencil lined precisely along the top of her desk. The pencil case sat in the top right corner, in case it the contents inside were needed. At the top left corner was the folder that held her assignment, and under that the folder that held the rest of her English theory.

On the table in front of her, was a sketch book. In her hand was a charcoal pencil and at the top of her book was a sheet of tracing paper to protect the picture once she had finished. On the paper was unfolding a sketch of one of the scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of Titania and her attendants while Titania drifts off to sleep in the woods.

The young girl jumped as someone spoke up beside her, she had been so engrossed in her work that she hadn't even heard the girl walking up. Looking up, she recognized Jessica from the riding lessons. She used her foot to push her satchel even further under her chair. "Of course." She replied in her softly spoken clipped accent. "Have-have you picked who you are going to study?" Starting a conversation wasn't her best quality, but the girl was obviously already worried about being somewhere she wasn't wanted.

[sepia]

A small smile slipping onto her face as she settled herself down, very glad that Cara didn't seem adverse to having some company - and vaguely comforted by the fact that she seemed just as shy as she was, even though she'd been her much longer - Jess found her eyes drawn to what Cara had been working on. It was obvious fairly quickly that it wasn't work, and Jess found herself very impressed with the drawing, half-finished as it was. She might not know much about art - and was pathetic at it, herself - but she thought she could recognise when something was well drawn.

"That looks really good," she said, ignoring for a moment Cara's question as she gestured towards the unfolding scene of Titania and her fairies, "Is it from a Midsummer Night's Dream?" It looked somewhat similar to an illustration she remembered from her own copy of the play - but then given how different artists were, the same scene could probably be drawn so many different ways, and it would probably turn out that it was actually a scene from Dune, or something.

"Oh, and I'm thinking of looking at Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings is probably my favourite book ever, but I don't really know anything about who wrote it. " She shrugged. "So it'll be interesting to find out, I think." Jess tended to have two settings when she was slightly unsure: don't say anything, or babble a lot. Apparently today, she was going for the second option.

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

"Thank you." The words that left the teen's mouth were honest without the self-modesty that a lot of other teenagers had. Cara just didn't have time for self-modesty, nor did she see the point in it. "Yes. I am doing Shakespeare, and have focused on two of his plays as well as all the required material." She nodded toward the board.

Once she finished the sketch, she gently blew the charcoal dust off the paper before she covered it with the tracing paper. She would wait at least a week before she took the picture out of the book, framed it and added it to her assignment.

She glanced over at Jessica, her cat-coloured eyes catching the light which brought out the yellow colour that encircled her irises. "Tolkien is amazing." She said with a hint of passion.

[sepia]

"Definitely," Jess agreed, enthusiasm entering into her voice. Books - now, those she could talk about for ever, if need be (it was a good thing, actually, that she'd started this whole 'getting-to-know-people' thing during an english class, as books were almost certainly going to be a safe topic of discussion in here). "Call me a nerd, but I adore his works... actually, I really like most fantasy books, and science-fiction, too." She shrugged. "I guess a like my fiction really fictional!"

Backtracking, slightly, on choices of topic, she cocked her head curiously at Cara. "How much did you find about Shakespeare? One of the things I've always heard about him is that we know surprisingly little about him, given how much he wrote that we still read."

Given, though, that he had been doing his plays in the sixteenth century, she supposed it wasn't that odd that he was relatively unknown. Tolkien, at least, had lived when good records were being kept, so she was guessing it wouldn't be too hard to find out about him. And maybe she could take a leaf out of Cara's book and look at some of his works, too, and how they related to his life. Hmm, maybe some of his works that had originally started off as stories for his son, though they weren't as well known, would be a good choice in that case...

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Cara blushed slightly as Jessica spoke about how much she loved Tolkien's books. She bit her lip, not quite feeling brave enough to admit that she didn't read fiction like that. Her idea of fiction was plays, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, or Arthur Miller's The Crucible,. As well as all of Shakespeare's work of course.

She felt a blush colour her cheeks again as the other girl asked her how much information she had found out about the man she was doing her assignment on. "I spent a bit of my life in England and picked up quite a bit of information on the man while I was there." She confessed, her eyes drifted toward the folder that held her assignment. "It's amazing how much information you can find when you ask the right questions to the right people." her tongue played with the back of her teeth, she wondered of she should put the girl in touch with the Oxford professor that she still spoke with, as the man had done a thesis on the works of Tolkien, and he might be able to give Jessica the parts of information she wouldn't find in any book.

~*~*~*~

Richard made his way around the classroom, stopping to speak with any student who needed help. He paused and looked over the shoulder of Andie. "How's it coming along?" He asked the girl, she was the only one he knew of that was researching a poet.

Andie looked over her shoulder at the handsome teacher, flashing him a bright smile. "It's coming along really well!" She gushed. "I'm learning so much and finding my love for poetry again."

Richard smiled a he carried his way around the room. Finally pausing by the desks occupied by Cara and Jessica. "Ah, I see that you have found Cara." He said to Jessica. "If you have any questions, just ask her. she has a memory like and elephant. She even reminds me of things I've said at times." He turned to Cara. "How is your paper coming?"

Cara raised her eyebrows in surprise, for a moment not sure what paper he was talking about sin she was also finishing off her Psychology paper. Her eyes drifted to the folder and the pieces clicked into place. "It is going well, thank you Sir." She replied, not wanting to mention that she had almost finished it already.

[Onzyy]

Darren laughed at the teacher's comment. Sir, when you do throw just make sure it is with a very heavy object. A dictionary usually works. Darren moved off and took out some paper and started planning his essay. Bram Stoker was most well known for Dracula, but there was so much more to this author.

How many people knew that he was bed-ridden until age 7. Or that he was named University Athlete. Bram Stoker was just an author that was hardly known for anything else except Dracula.

Darren wrote down the key points that he knew from memory, before going to look for a book on Stoker, or even a copy of Dracula. He found the latter to his joy, but not the former. Sighing he sat back down, and started with the introduction of his essay.

"No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves." was the quote he used. Further than that, he had struck a blank.